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The Monthly Aspectarian: Frank, your ancestral transmission work is very interesting. Can you tell us briefly how it all came about for you? Frank MacEowen: I think it began very early in childhood. I grew up in a very spiritual home; both of my parents are ordained Methodist ministers. Although the church was not something that I took to, they provided a particular kind of atmosphere that supported spiritual inquiry. It was a freedom of having my own thoughts, having my own experiences. TMA: As ministers, weren't they concerned that you follow their path? FM: No, actually, they were very liberal -- and in many ways, the cloak of their denomination pretty much covered their own spiritual paths, which I don't feel they were very vocal about at that time. My father, although he's remained more connected to the church, I think of as a kind of closet nature mystic and, to a certain degree, a poet. And my mother, I think, more than anything else is the one who most proactively supported my spiritual inquiry. At a later point in time, she actually was also studying with Peruvian healers and Native American teachers in the southeastern part of the United States. So the whole spirit of inquiry, trying to figure out where I fit in the bigger scheme of things, started at a very young age. The other element I feel that shaped my journey is that it all started ultimately with a wound. I call it the common wound, a wound that I think many people feel in the sense that we don't have rites of passage. We don't have ways of marking the turnings of our lives. As a child, I felt that intuitively -- especially as I approached what would normally be the age of puberty rites. I looked around and there was nothing like that for me in the culture that I was being raised in, so I began to search out that need . . . first of all through reading, and the reading really supported me in going deeper. My dreams began to take on a quality, a numinous quality that feels very akin to a journey. Many of these dreams started around the ages of 10 and 11. To make sense of the dreams, I would process them with my mother, who has had some Jungian background. But then even beyond that, in Native American cultures is where I found a real understanding of the spiritual dimension of life and how it permeates everyday existence. Around the ages of 12 and 13 is when I began to go deeper with Native American traditions, and for 12 years studied with various native teachers, participated in various native ceremonies, and really felt that that particular pathway would be my life path. At a later point, which was about six years ago, I participated in a ceremony among the Lakota people up in South Dakota, called the Sun Dance. I had gone to the ceremony with the intention of going deeper with the native traditions and cosmologies. In that ceremony, which Lame Deer, a writer of the Lakota nation, speaks of as the "granddaddy of them all," is where I reconnected with my own ancestral traditions. Before that time, I really didn't know anything about my blood lines, my background, any of the cultural or spiritual traditions that make up that tapestry. In fact, I feel like I spent quite a bit of energy just trying to not to be white so that I would blend in, so that I would belong to this other dimension . . . "behind the buckskin curtain" is what some people say. TMA: Do you have any Indian blood? FM: Not that I know of, no. My mother has done some research into our ancestry and believes that there may have been some intermarriage with Cherokee people, but it definitely is not something that was a cultural aspect of my upbringing by any means. The way I describe the Sun Dance is that [one expects Native American ancestors and instead, Celtic ones show up.] It was approaching something with the expectation that the experience, the essential energy, would be a particular way, and something radically different came through. That was my experience. TMA: This happened in a vision, in a trance? FM: Yes. I'm hesitant to use the word "vision" because that puts such an emphasis upon the visual aspect of it. There were certainly dimensions of that, especially towards the end. It started out more as a kinesthetic feeling where the sun-baked earth that we were dancing on I began to feel was moist and cool and misty around my feet; but in looking down, of course, it was just the earth, the South Dakota landscape. These kinesthetic sensations was basically how it started, and then it moved into more of an auditory shifting of perception. All of the male dancers in the arbor blow on eagle bone whistles in the Sun Dance, and there are small chirps and then there are these long, wailing screeches. In some ways, it sounds very much like an eagle call. At a particular point, as my consciousness began to really shift into a more visionary, more "other worldly" sense, these long, drawn-out screeches began to sound to me like bagpipes. At this point is where I got the hint that something was going on different than I had expected. After the kinesthetic and more of the auditory level, then the visual began. The visual nature of my experience was very much like looking over and seeing the people that I knew were in the arbor and dancing, which was about 100 people -- but in addition to those people, I began to see presences, warming presences, safe presences, that felt very familiar to me. I felt very comfortable with them, and I noticed that certain ones had kilts on. Some others were very plainly dressed in what you might imagine an Ozark farmer or some such would wear. I realized that these presences, these energies, were my own ancestors who had come to support me through this experience, because I was having a lot of fear that I was even going to make it, and really had put a lot of prayers and a lot of intention in being protected. TMA: You feared you weren't going to make it in what sense? FM: Psychologically more than anything else, because it is definitely a grueling experience to be fasting for a number of days and then dance from dawn until dusk in that ceremony. Most of these men go four days and I was only doing one day of this. But also, I really feel that I had a fear for my own physical survival. Beforehand, you're required to go on a vision quest and prepare yourself for this experience. Actually, you go on a few of them. I began to get this extreme doubt about my own participation in the ceremony, arising primarily from a feeling of who am I to be a part of this? These are a warrior people. They have done this for centuries. They are a more stout and hearty people. I began to wonder if I wouldn't end up just dying in this experience. What had led me there in the first place, however, was a completely different vision that I had when I had double pneumonia the autumn beforehand, where I saw myself there doing the ceremony. It was very much a guiding vision that I needed to be there, and my presence in the ceremony was what they call a wopila, which means "thanksgiving." It was a gesture of thanksgiving for having survived that pneumonia. TMA: So you weren't necessarily even looking for a vision like this? FM: No, not at all. In fact, I viewed my presence in the ceremony as a kind of living, breathing prayer of thanksgiving, simply for having my life, because the pneumonia got very serious. It filled up both lungs and I had like a 105° fever. And then when the dream state basically put it out there that I wanted to show the spirits some gesture that I wanted to live, this is what was presented to me. At the time, I was already connected to the native community, and specifically with people in that Sun Dance. When I shared what had happened for me, they felt strongly that I would be there and that I should be there. TMA: Okay, you're dancing and the ancestors start to show up. What happens? FM: Initially, I felt just recognition, like, Oh yes. Again, as I said, these warming presences . . . that's how it felt, warming presences. But then a great deal of fear came out for a few different reasons. One was, I wondered, How have I botched up these people's ceremony by bringing in these spirits? And knowing that many of these people can see through the veils, they can intuitively pick up on things that most people don't perceive, I wondered how many people were seeing this. So at first I thought, I'm going to get in trouble for bringing this element into their ceremony. TMA: Well, if they're going to let whites in, there's going to be white ancestors. FM: Right. Exactly. The other thing that happened for me, which really is the basis for some of the work that I do, is that I began to have a dynamic experience of what I call "clearing the bloodlines." Initially, this is a very frightening experience because without having any previous knowledge of my ancestral lines, I began to see glimpses, images, whole scenes of things like the Highland clearances of people being shot down in Scotland in the mid-1700s, women being raped, homes being burned. I began to see images of the potato famine, of people starving to death, of being on these ships coming to Canada and America and Australia. There's a song an Irish band here in Boulder sings, where they talk about the hungry grass -- it was like tongues stained green by eating grass, trying to survive. This was very much in my vision, just horrifying imagery. At first, the intellectual, analytical side of my being tried to analyze this away as some strange part of my psyche. But then I began to really get on a heart level that these events, these things, happened to people in my blood line. The imagery was very diverse. In fact, there's images that I still to this day haven't fully processed in terms of looking up their meaning. I don't even know what all it meant, but for quite a long time I saw these things and I felt it on a heart level and wept at the pain that is still there, I believe. Indeed, I think it is because of these very events that much of the Celtic spiritual tradition has been eclipsed. In a lot of the shamanic cosmologies, there is this idea of soul loss. And Western psychology talks about it as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or dissociation . . . essentially, symptoms of lack of memory, suppressing painful events when a trauma has happened to an individual. I have since developed this idea that that can happen to whole cultures. So I connected with the dimensions that have caused that for me, for my specific people. TMA: I think if we go back far enough, it's happened to the whole human race a time or two. FM: Yes, and I think that's what I mean by the "common wound"; that there is no one that is outside the sphere of influence of the wound. TMA: It's inherent in duality. FM: Yes. Once this, what I think of more as dark imagery, had made its impression upon me, then duality, as you're saying, the other side, began to flood through, which was the beauty of the cultures of northwestern Europe, the sacredness, more of the light aspects. I just got on a cellular level what the Celtic cultures were like previous to the introduction of certain elements -- political elements, religious elements, the coming of Rome and Christianity, which really changed the consciousness of the people. I got more of a sense of what the pre-Christian era was about. TMA: I was going to say, first Rome and then on its heels, the church. FM: Yes, and this is not to paint some naive, pristine image of what the pre-Christian era was like. Certainly there are things happening there, like the raids of the Vikings and so forth, but I got more of a sense of the day-to-day existence of the person and how certain things that we take for granted in this culture, like the hearth space of the home, was a luminous -- and I say "was"; I'd rather use present tense -- the hearth space is a luminous place of sacred story, of sacred sharing and teaching and healing. And indeed, some people even refer to the old ways as "the bright knowledge," and that is how it really made itself known to me. It felt like a lightening of the load. So it's almost like . . . I view it as having come towards something and having to go through the elements which eclipsed the wisdom, traveling through those elements and beginning to get an understanding of what has eclipsed that wisdom -- then being allowed into the dimension where the wisdom is still accessible. This fits with the shamanic cosmologies of virtually all indigenous peoples that I have had contact with since that time, which is quite a few, because I was trying to make sense of my experience . . . I am putting a book together as we speak that looks at the role of the ancestors in all of the different indigenous traditions, and it's very much the same. The dimension of the ancestors is considered to be an ongoing process, a cyclical process, a living process, and a reservoir of energy and wisdom and guidance that we can tap into. TMA: In the case of the Celts, it had been my understanding that the Romans and then later the church so ruthlessly and systematically stamped it out that there was very little left. I think in most of your ancestor societies there is a continual feeding of the system. FM: Yes. TMA: So it gets me to wondering how much Celtic could have been left -- or does it remain to be rediscovered later, such as you did? FM: Well, I think it's both. There's no argument that a great deal of the culture and the knowledge has been lost, and part of that, I believe, comes from the fact that there was such an emphasis placed on it being an oral tradition . . . which is also common to many indigenous people. If you wipe out the people who have the oral tradition, you begin to lose that tradition. TMA: Then they build cathedrals in the groves. FM: Right. Exactly. I think that's true, and at the same time, there are also aspects where people in the rural areas are still working with those energies, still working with those pathways that -- well, let's say, were given a Christian overlay. And yet people still visit that well, people still work with it in a healing way, people will still -- for lack of a better term, journey, to what that well has to offer. One of the quotes that sticks out in my mind most is something that Grandfather Wallace Black Elk of the Lakota Nation once said, and that is that no tradition is ever truly lost as long as long as there is one person who is orienting their lives to that. Now on the practical level, there's a lot that I agree has been lost. TMA: We know that there are Mayans who have kept their systems alive. Are you saying that there are living descendants of Celts who have kept it alive? FM: Yes, I am, but not in the way that we might imagine. I think there are individuals who, under a very thin veneer of Christianity, have maintained many of the practices on an individual, day-to-day basis. I know of people in the Highlands who will wake up in the morning and orient themselves to their hearth space and who will then go about their day. And as they're walking through their day, they're paying attention to any omens, to any signs that might be making themselves known to that person. That's one of the ancient ways of Druidic divination. Indeed, in the Highlands, which is more of where I know about this tradition as opposed to the Breton people of Brittany -- there is also a rich tradition that is being maintained by some people, the Highland second sight, An-dachalladh, that literally means "the two sights." And there are people that are quite open about having that gift, about having that propensity, even in the modern context. [Some say] that there are not an awful lot of living elders to go and learn from. I don't believe that's the case, because most people who are maintaining these things are quiet about it, because it wasn't all that long ago that they could have been ostracized and oppressed for doing this. Even today, the Protestants in Scotland essentially look at the Catholics and consider them pagans because of that nature. One of the quotes that I have in the other book that I'm working on is that just because a mythopoetic and spiritual history is no longer held in the conscious mind of the modern world, it does not mean that individuals who descend from ancient contexts are not still being influenced by that in their blood, in their very cells. My sense is that as we start to explore this tradition via the pathways that we do know were used -- for instance, sounding, toning, chanting, harmonic overtone singing -- which we know was part of the Druidic traditions; trance dance, which we know was widely practiced throughout the British Isles, and indeed, the circle dances are still done in Brittany -- and you see it coming through the folk traditions in Ireland, in Scotland, in Wales. I think that as we tap into these things that we know are basically universal doorways no matter what tradition you're a part of, that individuals who are wanting to can begin to bring back and bring forward into the modern context some of the wisdom, some of the knowledge and guidance that is part of that ancestral reservoir. That's my own take on it, and I've had discussions with a variety of people, such as Malidoma Somé, the West African Daggara shaman, [Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman] as well as Alberto Villoldo, who works with Inca elders in the Andes [Healing States, with Stanley Krippner]. I wholeheartedly support their work and we've had talks about the implications of this particular reality which you can call shamanic, or it can be called ancestor-based mysticism. There's a variety of things that could be put on it as a label. Both of those individuals, more than anybody else I've spoken to, feel that it's extremely important for people to begin working with the ancestors, even if that's just making an alter in your home and attuning to that level and inviting some awareness to that dimension in your life -- that that, in and of itself, can begin to create a flow of energy. TMA: Are you in touch with or experiencing contact with the ancestors that first came to you during that Sun Dance? FM: The answer is yes. I feel like certain presences that I experienced in that ceremony came specifically for that time and specifically for that event and, I think, to bring to me a particular composite memory, collection of memories. Since that time, I have experienced a maintenance of relationship with particular spirits that are part of my ancestry. They have different essential qualities that enable me to actually differentiate, almost as if you were going to pour one flavor tea as opposed to the other one . . . it smells and it tastes differently, just like a different person is coming through. It feels that dynamically different. TMA: How do they manifest to you? FM: It's more as a felt presence. Very rarely is it a seen presence. I have had a few experiences where it was seen. And I'll spell out a word that captures this experience; it has different meanings depending on who you're talking to in Celtic tradition. It's coimimeadh, [COY-me-may], and it literally means "co-walker." In the Highland traditions especially, there is a dormant tradition that I feel points to what I'm talking about, and that is a spirit, a tutelary clan spirit, an ancestor who literally walks with you through your life, guides you, and in some cases may even act as a protective agent, a warning system, so to speak, not unlike what some individuals report who have relationships to guardian angels -- TMA: Or spirit guides. FM: Yes, and it's hard to explain because Western language is very limited, and it's the only language that I know to talk about this experience-- but there is an aspect that this presence is its own entity who has had its own memories, his own memories, his own experiences which I can know; they're not my own memories, they're not past life memories. But there's also an aspect where my own memories of previous existences -- whether that be positive things or trauma -- can also be made accessible to me through this spirit . . . which touches on one other concept, which is the taghairm [TAR-am], and that means "the echo." Unlike Cartesian time, which sees things in a linear model, most indigenous traditions perceive of time as a spiral, as an unwinding experience of time where past, present and future are all accessible in one moment. Malidoma talks about this more eloquently than I, but there's a quality of wisdom, knowledge, memory being echoed from the past to us now, and also from the future to us now. I consider myself a lifetime student of this. Thus far, what has been shown and what I am oriented to is how the past has shaped us now, and how we might do things a little bit differently. TMA: Well, what about the now? What are the applications of your discoveries to the present? FM: I think there are many people who would say, What is the practical dimension of this? If it doesn't grow corn, what's it worth? And I agree. There's a lot out there that's being circulated that doesn't necessarily have a practical dimension to it. But above and beyond everything, I feel like the things I have tapped into, that are part of my living reality, assist me in prioritizing that which is most important. I think that that comes down to not allowing our own personal life visions to take the back seat. It has to do with the re-creation of certain things that are inherent to the ideals of the old Celtic ways, which is a love for the land, a dynamic participation with the land and the spirit-scape where you live, wherever you live . . . but also things like community, story. We are a culture that has lost our stories, and in some ways they're projected up on the movie screen for us to passively observe. But then we go home and live with people and we never really know their true story. That is what I feel like these ways are about . . . re-sanctifying, re-sacralizing daily existence and inviting in the awareness of the other world. The other world is always accessible; it's whether or not we're aware of the other world. TMA: What are you teaching in your workshops? FM: I do some basic work of just spelling out the cosmologies; how I have experienced certain things and then later on, through research, have found, yes, this is inherent to the tradition. I offer those cosmologies for people to begin orienting themselves to. Another thing that I work with are the senses. Most indigenous peoples acknowledge a multitude of other senses beyond the famous five that we most often focus on in this culture. The Basques of Spain have mapped out 137 senses that are possible in a human being . . . and so one of the things we work with is how can we begin to reclaim the atrophied spiritual senses that are part of everyone's divine birthright. Then in using those senses, we begin to orient ourselves to certain things that in Celtic tradition are quite important, such as the in-between places and times. There are certain times of the year where things are center; there's certain places in the landscape where it is very thin, where guidance and information can be experienced. Additionally, we actually do work with the ancestors specifically. I have some processes that have come to me that are quite effective for facilitating the individual in developing an awareness of the ancestral level. Then at a later time, depending on where I am and who the people are, we might even go a step further and create what's called the sinnisir roic, and that means "the ancestor feast." This is more of a votive offering than anything else. It is creating a feast bundle, and in the cosmologies of the ancient peoples -- and indeed, this is another way it shows up in the modern context -- is that many Irish and Scots believe that the ancestors dwell below the earth, within the land. So a feast bundle is prepared as an offering to bury, and is offered down to the ancestors. In that way, we are feeding the ancestors . . . and in exchange, we create a cyclical process where we are then fed. With so many of these things, we create a binding weave where we move from the idea of a thing to its practice. And then we explore some of the basic wounds that people are carrying still. There's this saying, and I don't know where it comes from, but it seems quite powerful, and it is, the healing of a wound must come from the blood of the wound itself. In that way, it's giving permission to enter into the wounds that have shaped us. TMA: Does your contact with the ancestors depend on blood lines? Or are you mostly working with people with northwestern European backgrounds -- which would be a great deal of white America. FM: Yes, it's true that there are quite a bit of Celtic people that come to the workshops, but on a private level, as well as in some of the workshops I've done, I've had Jewish people, Asian people, Hispanic people and others -- TMA: Are they experiencing contact with their ancestors? FM: Yes. TMA: And they would be from different systems. FM: Yes, the cosmology becomes different for those people. For instance, the most recent time I did this was at the Body and Soul Conference in Boulder, Colorado. We did a process of tuning into this ancestral dimension. It was a room of 300 people, and I think it's safe to say that most ethnic expressions were in the room. There were Muslim people, there were Asian people, and it was very interesting because that was the first time that I really had had the opportunity to work with a lot of other blood lines. TMA: I see. So you used the term "ancestral realm," which could encompass anybody's ancestors. FM: Yes, and to the degree that a workshop is a focus on the Celtic, most often the people who come are people of Celtic descent, specifically interested in some aspect of reclamation -- on the level of culture or on the level of spiritual tradition and practice. There's another course I've done, for the Naropa Institute, called "Experiential Genealogy." It's not a genealogy course in the sense of going and looking up records, although that is extremely valid and important and I think is sort of the next step for people. But I've had Norwegian individuals in the class, African-American . . . and more than anything else, I think it is an invitation to explore our diversity as well as what we hold in common, which is a deep longing for belonging. Every culture in America that I can think of has suffered some form of cultural attrition. TMA: Yes, the melting pot has its pluses and minuses. FM: True, the Celts are no longer taking heads, but yes, I think it's an invitation to begin reorienting ourselves to a level of reverence for where we all have come from and then where we are all going. We have to ask, how can we begin to weave a different reality than the dark ages? How can we begin to weave a different reality than the racism in the deep south? TMA: Is there a statement of essence that you'd like to make? FM: It would have to do with the hearth, and the hearth is considered the heart of the home in the Celtic cosmologies. It is a place of storytelling, a place of sharing. That is probably the biggest thing of all that I want to try to revivify in this culture -- people reclaiming hearth time; of going deep with the heart to recreate a feeling of home and tell each other their story.
 In addition to teaching workshops in ancestor-based Celtic mysticism and its interface with transpersonal psychology and ecopsychology, Frank MacEowen is also writing three books, including a novel and a manual of ancestor-based Celtic spiritual practice called The Soul Watching Way: Personal Soul Maintenance and Cultural Soul Retrieval through Ancestor-Based Celtic Mysticism. If you would like more information about the workshops, trainings, writings, shamanic counseling or teachings of Frank MacEowen, please contact him at Highland Wisdom Foundation 3105 Arnett Street, Suite 502 Boulder, CO 80304 , see his web site:www.highlandwisdom.com,
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